Tuesday, June 7, 2011

All Moved In

What a dirty look! Sorry I interrupted your nap..

Boy, it's been a llllong week. We managed to get all moved in to the new place with little complications. I mean, sure we only managed to find two or three boxes to pack all our crap in and that was a hassle. Pack a box, move it to the new place, unpack a box, take box back to old place, and so on. Ugh!

But we're all moved in and the dogs are starting to adjust to their lives. Both dogs love the new balcony and Rocket loves the lower windows that he can actually stand and look out of. Each day around the hours of 10am-12pm you can find Callie tanning out on the balcony and Rocket sitting on Callie's giant bed in the sun. A doggy's dream!

I also managed to squeeze in a trip to visit a friend for her birthday! Brought the dogs along since Ryan would be working long hours and the car ride looked a bit like this:

She's actually trying to suffocate him so she gets more attention...

The trip was fun! The birthday girl is also known as the mom of Cooper the Wonder Dog - remember him as the dog who managed to get Callie out of her shell our first night together. Cooper has a lovely sister, also a Golden, named Cara who is the biggest love bug in the entire world. Although Callie will always have that soft spot for Cooper, her and Cara get along ridiculously well. They could play all day long and it wouldn't be enough. Cara made a great impression on Rocket as well. He can be a little shy with big dogs at first but soon enough Cara was chasing Rocket around the house like her personal play thing. He didn't seem to mind at all.

We have had some annoying issues during the move. Rocket started to have some pretty gnarly stools so I had the rescue take him to the vet. Impacted anal gland, yikes! Weird I didn't see more signs - I'm constantly on the look out with Callie since she gets occasional problems back there. A week of medication later and he seems to feel fine.

And, the worst part of the move: Rocket started the whole peeing in the house thing again. Those annoyingly and surprisingly large pees that he manages to get EVERYWHERE. We really think it's an anxiety thing. He started as we began packing and it got worse in the new place. He is also much worse when we had visitors or if anything slightly exciting was happening. He also acts up more then Ryan's home rather then when it's just me (I think he can feel Ryan's frustration). He would pee all over the place then go right outside and pee a pee large enough to make a mastiff proud. That lead us to this:

I was never very good at crate training. It's really never appealed to me, and I felt terrible putting a dog in there. I mean I use them, don't get me wrong. When your taking new dogs into your home it's much easier to keep them contained when your not around rather then come home to all sorts of destruction. At least until you know them a bit better. But I still hate it, and I'll generally sacrifice a few chewed shoes for the sake of a dog getting a bit more free range.

But our new apartment has a carpeted bedroom. A brand new carpet actually; when we came to see the place they were putting it in. And the frequency and sheer magnitude of this tiny dog's urination is quite impressive. The carpet would be no match for him.

The kennel has helped a lot. During the day when we're around he has no problem sitting in the kennel and with his bed in there he'll generally go curl up for a nap. At his worst points he was peeing every two hours. Now at the two hour mark, I can stick him in the kennel where at least if he has an accident it's contained.

The kennel also helps at night. We need to shut him out of the bedroom and he hates that. Without the kennel he was scratching at the door like a maniac all night long. With the kennel he certainly whines like we're slowly torturing him, but he's not too loud, and a simple "Hey! Knock it off!" usually quiets him long enough to fall asleep. The problem is: he pees his bed every night!! I've tried putting down paper near the door to pee on, giving him chew toys or stuffed kongs, and I even feed him in there but he still pees evvvvery night. Maybe he just likes the smell of a freshly landered bed each day...